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A Novel
by Téa Obreht
Three lives, one hundred years, one ghost town: an explosive novel about a mysterious place called Sunrise, where the secrets of the past refuse to stay buried, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife.
In 2024, Nina's small-engine plane crashes into a lake in the Wyoming mountains. Her boyfriend Ben, who was flying it, is nowhere to be found. Lost and freezing on the shore, Nina is armed with only a few old protein bars, a phone with no service, and a vague hope of rescue. It is up to her to survive in the vast wilderness. But then she stumbles upon Sunrise—a town of the Old West that is strangely well maintained, but seemingly abandoned. A place that holds the missing link to a ghost story one hundred years in the making.
In 2003, Sand Daw's golden boy Coll is putting the finishing touches on the town's annual historical reenactment. But when an upstart would-be author comes to him with questions about one of Sunrise's most beloved figures, it threatens to upend everything he thought he knew about the city—and himself.
In 1902, town founder, gunslinger, and legendary pulp hero Anton Vargas returns to Sunrise and quickly takes charge of a group searching for a missing boy. But who really is Vargas? What does he know about the boy's disappearance? And why has he returned after such a long absence?
These three strangers are separated by time and circumstance. But Sunrise's many secrets are like gunpowder: quiet, contained, until they encounter a spark. Magisterial and suspenseful, Téa Obreht's novel challenges the myths we think we know: of heroes and villains, of the people and places to which we lay claim, and, most of all, of our own lives.
"A Wyoming ghost town provides the stage for this spectacular novel from Obreht about the enduring myths of the Wild West ... Obreht employs impressive restraint, providing just enough clues to create intrigue as the reader pieces together the connections between the three storylines ... it careens to an explosive climax. Readers will have a blast." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[Obreht] delivers a virtuoso performance. In her hands, these three narratives aren't just satisfying on their own. They illuminate each other in ways that are both elegant and emotionally deep...An adventurous, rewarding novel from a writer who just gets better and better." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Obreht is riveting in each time frame as she exults in emulating and subverting tales of the Old West while exposing the poisonous complexities of gender, taboo love, myth, history, and our desecration of the wild in a breathtaking, shocking, and reverberating survival story." —Booklist (starred review)
"A Cessna plane crashes into a Wyoming lake and a young woman staggers out, uninjured. As she searches for her missing boyfriend she stumbles into an abandoned, pristine mining town where a pair of conjoined mysteries await, unraveling her sense of time and place." —The Boston Globe
"I've loved every book Téa Obreht has written but I might love this one the most. It's tense and beautifully constructed, and it features Obreht's signature precision when it comes to both language and emotion. Please put this book into the hands of everyone you know." —Liz Moore, New York Times bestselling author of The God of the Woods
"Sunrise is thrilling and ingenious. In her new novel, Obreht explores this country's troubled past, its gaps and silences, and the rich history that only new storytellers can excavate." —Laila Lalami, bestselling author of The Dream Hotel
This information about Sunrise was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Beowulf Sheehan Photography
Téa Obreht's debut novel, The Tiger's Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was an international bestseller. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, and Zoetrope: All-Story, among many others. Originally from the former Yugoslavia, she now lives in New York with her husband and teaches at Hunter College.
Author Interview
Link to Téa Obreht's Website
Name Pronunciation
Téa Obreht: Tay-uh Ah-bret
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